


Dawn

by Storneiy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers - Freeform, Gen, Steve Rogers (mentioned) - Freeform, daemon AU, dæmon AU, written before Infinity War aired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-12-01 22:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20920790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storneiy/pseuds/Storneiy
Summary: White Wolf, they call him.Bucky does not remember his dæmon. But realization dawns on him.





	Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in early 2018 after seeing the ending of Black Panther when I had a lot of feelings about Bucky. Since then, I have not been active in the MCU fandom and I will never be again.

There was faint sense of something missing, sometimes. But then, most of the time, there was just nothing.

White Wolf, they call him.

White wolf.

The name makes him ache, makes him remember a feeling he cannot get a hold of because he knows. It is there, with him, it always is, but he does not remember.

He had heard the stories when he was young, that much he knows (how though is a miracle to him, but the human brain does work in its mysterious ways, he used to think to himself). He’d heard them before he had met Steve even - stories about people who had been removed from their dæmons and who had been changed. Turned into mere shells, empty, walking the earth as voids within life, as strangers to themselves. He remembers the horror he had seen in that. No-one had known what became of the severed eventually, and no one had dared to care. Six-year-old Bucky, as all the other children in the backstreets, had been terrified and had held his dæmon close to his heart. The former Winter Soldier remembers that much now, but in his memory the dæmon is shapeless.

He does not remember her. Doesn’t want to, really. Doesn’t think he deserves it. After everything, the war, the fall, the years and years without knowing, those timeless decades, of obeying and killing, killing, obeying, of being a machine and ice-cold, merciless and indifferent like the winter. Even after what came after, after the day on the heli-carrier, after Steve (Steve, his mission - but not his mission, his friend), he doesn’t think he deserves it.  
So he doesn’t need to remember, is what he thinks.

Not that he could. The regular passing of time, as it is experienced by humans in this world, has still hardly come back to him. He hardly feels human again. And thus, the concept of dæmons had, in all honesty, been far from his mind.  
And he doesn’t mind, really.  


But now they call him White Wolf and he feels a sensation coming over him, like a wave over his body on the shore of an endless sea.

He does not want to be pitied or looked after in these times. He does not want to feel like he should miss anything about a life that is past and that has no relevance for him now. He would even doubt if he was still able to miss anything. Being alive, and awake, and noticed by other people as human being and a person even, it is not something that he thinks he will get used to very soon. They tell him he would have to relearn these things. He isn’t sure.  


He catches the glances, sometimes. On the rare occasions he sees people other than the doctors and nurses, when he goes to the villages alone (partly due to his doctors making him, partly because everyone within the hospital walls wants something from him, expects feelings of his and thoughts that he just can’t give them, and sometimes he does not want to deal with expectation). When he goes to the villages alone, he can feel the stares. 

Their stares, right here in the streets of Wakanda, that miraculous country hidden from them all (maybe he’d think about that some time and react accordingly), their stares are different from what he has experienced during the decades that have passed. They are just as fearful, they try to mask themselves just like everyone has always done. But now he can notice. Never do any of them dare to speak to him or meet his eyes. Once or twice, in a mood that he himself considers a little lighter and slightly more open to conversation (which he doesn't really do anymore), he had told others (doctors, Steve) about the stares. When the doctors had asked him what he thought of them, he had shrugged them off as people staring at the vacant spot where his left arm should have been, or them picking up on the way he wandered through them absentmindedly, like he wasn’t there. Which they would have been right about, and they should feel entitled to their staring in his opinion, observing the foreign man who preferred to stay inside a mind that had been in ruins before and was still full of debris, observing and shying away.

He had never mentioned to those he was talking to that they might have noticed he had no dæmon, although the obvious lack of a mention was a mention on its own.  


Some people might not have noticed the absence, he is sure (as sure as sure he can be when he cannot want to care about those matters). Some people might have thought he simply had a small dæmon, suiting his reserve and obvious disinterest in participating in the life of the humans around him and maybe other humans in general. Maybe some people even thought their bond had just been stretched, like the bonds of the others and their dæmons had, the Avengers, as people call them. Steve is a part of them, too. Bucky happens to think it suits him. 

But generally, people would have noticed, it is obvious, and of course they would have shied away upon realizing.  


In actuality, he does not think that anyone was surprised about the absence at his side. One did not become the killer of a century and remain intact. Hell, nowadays he does not even feel broken anymore, but that does not change the fact that life and his mind have been taken from him. Which he is okay with now. There is no place for anger within him anymore. There is no guilt and no regret, no sadness, no sorrow. He will obviously never be the same, and it’s all the same to him.  
There is no will either. There is nothing guiding him.  


Maybe there is Steve. Even though nothing else had remained, he still has some memory. He seems to have lost next to none of his memories of Steve.  


Now. What does one do after life that had been a century but had been no life for more than half of it?

Doctors had spoken to him about recovery, once, but had dropped it when he had just stared. Not even incredulously, he had just stared. What was there to recover from? Being turned into nothing? His brain overridden, his thoughts flatlining? What was there to go back to? Everything he remembers is gone. All history.  


Again, there is Steve. He seems like the only thing that keeps Bucky – not going, but standing, and not sitting down and never getting back up again. There is something about him that makes it clear that he still hasn’t given up on him, although Bucky wishes Steve could see.  


(Although he supposes he does, he might be the only one capable of understanding.)

He has memories, sure, he knows that now they have resurfaced, and being detached from them now won’t erase them again. Memories of Steve and that dæmon of his, young and wild and spiteful, always. Ever stubborn and up to all those fights they could not win. Steve’s dæmon - he does not remember her name - would never change forms in battle, no matter how close she was to losing. And he remembers how he himself would step in, and how Steve’s little dæmon (she is always an ermine in his mind) would let him, only him, through to help Steve out of his self-made messes. It still makes him smile faintly. Memories of Steve seem to be the only thing that does.

Logically, he knows that on those occasions, his dæmon must have been there, too. Must have been there alongside him and good friends with the little creature that amplified Steve’s fighting spirit so fiercely.

But even with the rest of the memories as intact as they can be in this damaged mind of his, he does not remember. He knows there was a companion at his side, sure, there must have been. He remembers that there was a feeling about it, but he couldn’t describe it anymore. Logically, he can tell that they would have said to each other they would be "together until the end of the line". He knows, but he has no connection to it anymore.

He remembers vividly how Steve and him had said the same. And here they were again, ages later. Bucky wonders where - with all that had happened and both of them still standing – that end could even be.

Now they call him White Wolf and something clicks in his brain. He knows, without a doubt, that this is what she was, what she had settled as when she had saved the ermine for the third, or fourth, or fifth time and when he had thought that he’d protect Steve until all would end. He knows. But there is nothing in his mind that connects him to her, or any emotion growing from the realization.

He understands now. He understands what had happened to those ostracized, how all emotion had gone when their dæmon, their god damn soul, had left. He understands and he does not mind.

If this is “depression”, he does not mind. To him, this feels like peace. Unshaken, without anything, he just exists, and he likes that. He knows that he used to be fun-loving, seeking out the new, but what does it matter now? All he has left are his flesh and his bones - and not even all of those, as a macabrely humorous part of his brain adds - and they haven’t even felt like anything in a long time.

Steve would be visiting him soon. Would want to know how he felt. Bucky wonders if he could understand his blankness and the immense amount of peace he is feeling. 

Bucky wonders if Steve ever thinks about the white wolf that is gone from his memory. Does he miss her sometimes? Does his dæmon miss her?

Come to think of it, he hasn’t even seen her around in this new century. He would like to know if she actually was an ermine because the thought manages to amuse him.  
His train of thought comes to a halt. If he hasn’t seen her around - there might be the possibility of her not being around. He dismisses the thought. Steve still seems so full of life and emotion, and morals and spirit, as always, as ever.  
Another thought forms. The tesseract might have merged the two. How and why, he doesn’t know, but that’s how thoughts are. He dismisses it, too, but wonders for a moment, what that would mean, if it would mean anything at all.

Useless thoughts, he decides. Something like this couldn’t have happened to him. He knows she isn’t there with him, he also knows she isn’t out there. He does not remember how she died, or lived, and that’s probably how this felt for everyone to keep them from going insane.

He thinks he can deal with it.

He thinks, what does it mean that I remember now what she must have been?

He thinks, why does it feel like something is changing?

Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe unshaken, empty existence was not all there is for him until the line would end.

Maybe he could find relevance again, maybe it was a matter of time, and maybe he was already getting there.

White Wolf, they call him, and he starts to know why.

White Wolf, they call him, and that’s what he’ll become.


End file.
